Peri-urban agriculture as key driver to sustainability. A planning project in an Alpine city

Background: There is a general agreement on the role that peri-urban agriculture can play in achieving sustainable cities. This role is particularly crucial in the Alps, which are now the scene of relevant changes, involving above all cities that are embracing metropolitan functions. These changes pose problems, first of which being the impairment of the particular relations between urban and natural processes that form the basis of not just the sustainability, but also the same identity, of the Alpine city. In fact, due to the development of processes that are highly anomalous in mountain territories, such as urban sprawl, Alpine cities run the risk of reproducing lowland urban development. Methods: The article focuses on the way whereby the identifying traits of the Alpine city can be maintained, and not least its sustainability, pointing out that in the Alps peri-urban territories, which in many Alpine regions still present characteristics distinct from those of lowland city, can play a key role in the construction of the new urbanity suggested by the sustainable development paradigm. Results: The peri-urban territory north of Trento, the Rotaliana Königsberg, for which a planning project was drawn up that aims to return to this territory its agro-food vocation, constitutes an evidence of the effectiveness of such approach. Remarkable aspect of the project is in the creation of a vast agricultural park that encompasses almost all this urbanized territory. Conclusions: Finally, the conditions are summarized which allow to achieve similar results. © 2016, The Author(s).